Man Against Nature

I stand near the boiling stockpot warming my fingers while the chicken and vegetables melt, the smell making our apartment strong. Canned wind howls from the TV screen in the living room, producing a cool glow. He loves man-against-nature shows which are really just a buff-looking model talking to himself (and his hidden film crew) before lunch, which is probably catered sushi.

I serve him the fresh broth on a lockable tray, move his legs from couch to the floor, bend my knees to avoid using my back. He drinks soup with a special deep spoon – and though his fingers tremble, they are able to grasp. I sit with him, cheek against his warm shoulder, watching the man trapped between two icy mountain ranges building a fire out of sticks.
 
 
 
Meg Pokrass has published stories in McSweeney’s, Five Points, Wigleaf, Smokelong, and numerous literary magazines online and in print. Her work has been internationally anthologized, most recently in the Norton anthology Flash Fiction International (W. W. Norton, 2015). Meg received the Blue Light Book Award for her collection of prose poetry Cellulose Pajamas (Blue Light Press, 2016). She curates fiction for Great Jones Street Press, and is Festival Curator for the new Bath Flash Fiction Festival.